In production applications, such as real world web sites and web services, it is common for production data comprising an application's memory to contain sensitive data that could compromise the security or integrity of a user. Sensitive data can comprise, among other things, personally identifiable information (PII), which can be used to identify information about individual users. For instance, medical applications will likely contain doctors' notes about patients. Similarly, online store applications likely have credit card numbers of users in memory.
Since production data can include sensitive data, it is undesirable to make such production data accessible outside a production environment. Moreover, this may be required due to legal requirements and privacy agreements. The production data, however, is useful for diagnostic and other purposes. As a result, production data may be available for use within a production environment, if allowed. Otherwise, test data can be utilized in an attempt to replicate production application state.